


PO Box 104

by Jelly



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aruani secret santa 2015, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 16:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5504855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jelly/pseuds/Jelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a weird little Advent Calendar. Armin knows it's completely unnecessary but he knows it makes her smile, and that alone is enough to keep doing it. [PO Box AU. For Feramisart on tumblr for the Aruani Secret Santa].</p>
            </blockquote>





	PO Box 104

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feramisart (on tumblr)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=feramisart+%28on+tumblr%29).



> For Feramisart on tumblr for the Aruani Secret Santa.

PO Box 104

  

 

It starts on a Tuesday morning. It’s October and it’s raining, and Armin shakes the water off his umbrella when he lets himself into work. There’s a line of people at the counter which is hardly surprising – it’s always busy in the mornings – and he offers the regulars he recognizes a small grin as he passes them by. Sorting mail for the post office boxes at the local post office isn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but it helps pay for college and he would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy seeing people’s faces light up when they collect their mail. Hand written letters are such a novelty nowadays, and the fact that they’re handwritten guarantees they’ll be _nice_ and not bills or bank statements.

 He clocks in and shoves his bag into his pigeonhole in the tea room, greets his workmates with a yawn, and gets to work on today’s pile of mail. He’s half way through sorting his third handful when a PO box at eye level opens up and he catches sight of her.

 The name on the letter he’s about to put into her PO box is “Annie Leonhardt” and she has sunshine in her hair and the ocean in her eyes. She blinks at him through the box and, for a moment, Armin forgets how to breathe. He pushes her letters towards her and offers her a nervous smile.

 “Thanks,” she says, returning it. She takes the mail from the box and studies it, and Armin watches as the tiniest hint of a frown flickers across her face. She glances up momentarily, gives him one final smile, and shuts the little door.

 And then she’s gone.

 For a full minute afterwards, he stares into the now-empty PO box, breath hitched in his throat like he’s unsure if the air is coming in or going out.

 “Armin?”

 He sucks the breath in and turns.

 Marco is paused in the hallway with a parcel in his arms and an eyebrow raised. “You okay?”

 Armin shakes himself out of his stupor. His cheeks feel warm and he looks away to hide the blush he knows is on his face. “Yeah,” he says dumbly. “Everything’s fine. I thought I saw something, that’s all.”

 “Right,” says Marco with a chuckle. “Don’t let Levi catch you standing around though. You know what he’s like.”

 “Yeah, yeah, right,” says Armin. “I’ll – um – I’ll get back to work.” But he looks into Annie’s PO Box once more and wonders if he’ll see her again.

  

 

  Her PO box gets emptied every day so Armin knows she must come in every morning to retrieve her mail – he just doesn’t catch her at it for weeks. It’s early November when it happens again. It’s snowing today. Armin hasn’t quite sorted everything addressed to her when the PO box opens and she peers inside.

 “Oh,” he says, pretending he’s not at all embarrassed by the fact that he hasn’t sorted her mail out on time. He smiles awkwardly, trying to be subtle about the way he thinks the snow in her hair and the flush in her cheeks makes her look rather pretty. “Annie, right? Sorry - give me a second.” He flips through the wad of mail in his hand to make sure he’s found all of her letters before he hands them over.

 “Busy day today?” she asks. Armin can see the fog of her breath through the PO box, and he shuffles a little.

 “A little bit, yeah,” he says. “Oh. Hold on, I’ve missed one.” He pulls one more letter from his pile – the stamp looks like it’s from Europe; he figures she must have relatives or friends there – and reaches through the PO box to give it to her. “Sorry again for the delay.”

 She shrugs like she doesn’t mind. “Thanks,” she says, taking the letter from him. A tiny grin lights up her features and Armin can’t help but smile too. “I didn’t get your name,” she says, looking up after a moment.

 “Oh,” says Armin again. “I’m Armin,” he offers. “Armin Arlert.”

 Annie chuckles at him. “Nice to meet you, Armin Arlert,” she says. “I’ll see you around.” And she closes the post office box and Armin is left standing in the back room with a blush and a stupid grin on his face.

 When Marco asks about it later, he lies and claims it’s just the cold.

 Marco just snorts into his tea and says nothing else.

 

 

 He runs into her again about a week later while he’s manning the service desk. Her hoodie is white and the coat she’s wearing over it is deep blue and covered in snow. Secretly, he’s very grateful that it’s not too busy today because it means she doesn’t have to line up and he doesn’t have to serve anyone else. He waves her over. “I don’t see you in here very often,” he says.

 “I don’t usually have to come in very often,” says Annie. She pulls a card from her pocket and Armin recognizes it almost immediately as the parcel notification he’d slipped into her PO box a couple of days ago. “Apparently my package arrived?”

 “Ah,” says Armin. “Yeah, it did. I can go and get it for you. I need ID though.”

 She raises an eyebrow at him. “You know who I am,” she says, but she takes her backpack off and rifles through it anyway for her license.

 “Does chatting briefly through your PO box a total of twice really count as ‘knowing you’, though?” Armin points out.

 Annie lets out a bell-like laugh, and Armin turns away to retrieve her package but also to hide the redness creeping into his cheeks. She has a lovely laugh. It only takes him a second to find her parcel (because he’d left it in a very particular place for when she came to pick it up), but he waits a full minute anyway before he lugs the box out of the backroom.

 “What did you order?” he asks, huffing a little as he heaves it onto the counter. “Bricks?”

 “Books,” Annie corrects with a snort. “They’re from home. I’m having them sent here a few at a time.”

 “Home?” The return address on the box says Munich, and he studies her, the box, and then her again with a frown. “You sound very American for someone who’s supposed to be German,” he says.

 “So do you, _Armin_ ,” Annie says, and he snorts because… well… touché. She signs for her package and lifts her box off the counter with a grunt. “See you later, yeah?”

 He nods, and when he goes red this time, he doesn’t turn away. “See you,” he says with a wave. He stares after her long after she disappears into the snow.

 

 

 It’s a stupid idea. No. Not just stupid. It’s the cheesiest idea in the world, and he only convinces himself to go through with it because Eren insists that it’ll work. It’s lunch time, and they’re hunched over a table in the corner of the university café. Eren has his coffee in one hand and his phone in the other – probably trying to get a hold of Mikasa because she’s not here yet – and Armin amuses himself by drawing little stick figures standing on a wall in the moisture on the window.

 “You have spoken to her, haven’t you?” Eren asks absently.

 The question comes out of nowhere, and Armin blinks at his friend and frowns. “Spoken to who?”

 Eren pauses and glances at him over his phone. “That Annie chick you keep running into at the post office.”

 Armin chokes on his coffee. “I don’t keep _running into her_ ,” he sputters. “I work there and she has a PO box.”

 “Oh, okay,” says Eren without looking up. “So you see her regularly then.”

 “I – _no,_ ” says Armin, like he’s denying it even though there’s nothing really there to deny (yet). “She comes in every morning but it’s not like I wait by her PO box just to say hi.”

 Eren pauses. “…You don’t, do you?”

 " _No.”_ Armin scowls and glares at him. “Stop making it weird. She literally just has a box at the post office. I talk to the other regulars too, you know.”

 “You don’t have a crush on other regulars,” mutters Eren, and Armin scowls again and throws a sugar packet at him. It hits him square on the nose, and the brunet blinks and lays his phone down at last. “Why don’t you just ask her to hang out?”

 “What, on a date?” Armin flushes a little but he hides it by bringing his coffee to his lips. “Bit sudden, don’t you think? We barely know each other.”

 “You’re not _going_ to get to know each other if you don’t ask her to hang out,” snaps Eren. “Jesus, Armin, you’re supposed the rational one between the two of us. You _know_ that asking her to hang out is the sensible thing to do. Stop being a baby about it.”

 “I’m not _being a baby_ ,” grumbles Armin, but he knows that he’s right. Years ago, when they were still in high school, he remembers Eren being just as stubborn about his feelings for Mikasa, and he knows that he gave him the same advice that Eren is giving him now. Talking to your person of interest is the easiest and the most adult way of handling a situation like this, but it’s no less scary as an adult than it is as a teenager. Besides, Eren had been oblivious to his own feelings, and then stupidly stubborn about them for _years_ before Armin had essentially forced him to make a move. He thinks he shouldn’t be allowed to complain.

 He does though, of course. He lets out a loud, exaggerated groan and throws the sugar packet back at Armin. “Well, you can’t just sit here and do nothing about it,” he says (and Armin scowls because yes, yes he can, especially because Eren was significantly worse when they were younger and _he_ had to put up with it). “You’re never going to get anywhere like this. At least leave a letter for her in her PO box or something.”

 “What am I, eighty?”

 But Eren sits up suddenly as if he’s just had some sort of philosophical breakthrough. “That’s _exactly_ what you should do.”

 Armin makes a face. “I’m not leaving love letters in her PO box.”

 “Girls love that stuff, though,” says Eren. “C’mon. It’s a great idea.”

 “I’m _not_ leaving love letters in her PO box,” Armin repeats, and he feels his face warm again for a lot of reasons, including the fact that Eren seems to be enjoying the idea more than he should.

 “It’s something nice, though, isn’t it?” he insists. “No one said they had to be love letters, because, yeah, super creepy. But didn’t you say she only moved here from Munich or something semi-recently? I bet you she’d appreciate it.”

 Armin stares at him, not because he thinks it’s a crazy idea (it is), but because it actually sounds sort of sane. He’d seen the way her face lit up the day he handed her the letter from – he’d assumed – her family, and he knows for a fact that literally _everyone_ enjoys getting handwritten letters nowadays. _Never be afraid to be kind_ , his grandfather had told him once, and he’d lived by that for long enough that it’d be a pity if he stopped now. “She’ll know it’s me,” he says at last, not because he doesn’t want to do it but because he has nothing else to say.

 “Isn’t that the point?” asks Eren. “She hasn’t been here long and it’s almost Christmas time, man. Even if you don’t want to make a move because you think it’s too fast, she’d probably still appreciate a friend.”

 There’s a pause. And then Armin sighs. “I hate when you make sense,” he mumbles at last.

 Eren just frowns and tosses another packet of sugar at him.

 

 

 He waits until the first of December before he makes a move. At first, it’s just because he’s nervous and he doesn’t know exactly _how_ go about it, but he sees her again twice through her PO box and once more while she’s picking up another parcel of books, and he finds that their conversations grow longer and friendlier the more they run into each other. Levi had actually caught him chatting to her one morning and he’d been on the receiving end of unamused glares for the rest of the day.

 On the first of December, he sorts her mail, as always, but once he’s sure he’s found all of it, he slips it into her PO box with a pack of chocolates and a little blue card.

  _Enjoy :)_ is all it says because he couldn’t think of anything else to put on it.

 His heart almost explodes when she opens her PO box that morning.

 “Are these from you?” she asks, with probably the most beautiful smile Armin has ever seen in his life.

 He shrugs and grins back. “I just sort the mail,” he says, but he winks and scurries away before Levi can catch him slacking off again.

 

 

 It turns into a weird little Advent Calendar. Armin leaves something different in her PO box every day with different messages on the same little blue cards, and it goes on for a week before she starts leaving things in return. They’re all in envelopes – blue, like his – and at first, he thinks someone else must be helping him sort her mail, until he pulls the first one out and finds it’s addressed to him.

  _Thanks,_ it says, and it’s accompanied by a gift card for the bookstore a couple of blocks away.

 The next time he finds a blue envelope is a week later, and this time, it’s a couple of movie tickets and a phone number. He calls it while he’s on his break.

  _“Hello?”_

Armin coughs awkwardly. “Um. Hi. Annie?”

  _“Armin,_ ” she greets. It’s a little hard to tell if she’s excited to hear from him but Armin hopes that she is. “ _Sorry_ ,” she says, _“I didn’t know if you would actually call. I thought… it might be a little forward but you’ve been leaving chocolate and other assorted snacks in my PO box for a couple of weeks now so…”_

“It’s fine,” says Armin. “You – uh – left some tickets in there.”

 “ _Yeah_ ,” says Annie. There’s something about the way she says it the makes Armin think that she’s holding her breath. “ _They’re to say thanks. I thought maybe you’d have someone you wanted to go with or –”_

Armin lets out an odd laugh. “Nah,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “There’s no one I can really take with me unless…” He takes a breath. “Unless you wanted to. See a movie. With me, I mean.” He scrunches his eyes closed partly because he’s so damn awkward about this that it’s embarrassing, but mostly because he’s bracing himself in case she says no.

 But she lets out the breath he thought he’d heard her holding and says, “ _Sure. I’d love to go with you. Are you free at all this week?”_

 “I get off at four,” he says quickly, and too late, he wonders if he’d sounded a little too eager.

 She doesn’t seem to mind though. _“I’ll meet you outside the post office at four then,”_ she says. Armin can hear the grin in her voice, and he can’t help but grin back.

 “Cool,” he says. “See you then.”

  

 

  The movie they end up seeing is about giants, and there’s something about it that gives Armin a weird sense of déjà vu. He thinks Annie might have felt it too because there’s a thoughtful frown on her face when they leave the theatre and it stays there until they arrive at the noodle shop a couple of blocks away. It fades over dinner, and it’s only towards the end of the evening that Armin realizes they’ve been talking as if they’ve been friends for years.

 He learns that she’d grown up here, in the States, but had to move in with her father all the way in Munich part way through high school. They’d lived in a little apartment on the edge of the city proper, and that she’d come back for university in late August. He learns that she likes to read (“I’m a sucker for fairy tales,” she’d admitted, looking embarrassed), and that she likes cats (“I had one before I had to move in with my dad,”) and that she’s been a champion kickboxer since she was eleven years old (“I’m looking for a club around here, actually. It’d be a shame to quit now,”). He’s both surprised and unsurprised to find out she’s studying physiotherapy at the same university he and Eren and Mikasa go to, and in return, he tells her about his classes (“Pre-med’s intense but I really want to be a doctor so…”), and his friends (“They’re really weird, I’m not going to lie,”), and his grandfather ("He owns a bookshop outside of town. I should take you sometime, I think you'd like it.")

 “So… what’s the deal with the sweets you keep leaving in my PO box?” she asks at last as they start their walk home. It almost sounds like she’s been waiting all night to ask. “Is that something you do for everyone or…?”

 “God, no,” says Armin with a laugh. “Do you realize how many boxes there are at that post office?” He shakes his head. “Admittedly, it was Eren who said I should do it. I mean, given you have a PO box, and the fact that you’re still getting parcels from home, I sort of assumed that you haven’t been in town for too long. It’s almost Christmas, y’know? We thought it would be nice.”

 “It is nice,” says Annie. Even in the dim evening light, Armin can see the faint dusting of red on her cheeks. “Thank you,” she adds. “It’s nice to feel like I’m welcome here, you know?”

 He frowns at her. “I hope there wasn’t anything that made you feel unwelcome before.”

 Annie lets out a laugh. “No,” she says. “Nothing like that. It’s just not often people leave sweets in your PO box.” The come to a stop at an old brick apartment block not too far away from the university. “Tonight was nice. We should do it again some time.”

 Armin nods, a smile tugging at his lips. “I’m glad you think so,” he says. “I guess I should get going though, huh?” He heaves a sigh and the realization that the night is coming to an end hits him like a ton of bricks. “Feel free to give me a call if you need anything, yeah?”

 “I will,” says Annie. She hesitates and fiddles with her keys, but after a moment, she shakes her head and opens the gate. “See you around Armin,” she murmurs, touching his hand tentatively and bidding him one last smile. “And thanks again.”

 Armin stares after her, his heart beating unsteady rhythms in his chest and the ghost of her touch still lingering on his skin.

  

 

 Mikasa hands him a couple envelopes a couple of days later. “Eren and I are doing the Christmas party this year,” she tells him, shrugging her backpack off her shoulder to zip it up again. “You’re coming, yeah?”

 “Yeah,” says Armin, but he frowns at the envelopes she’d handed him. “Are these actual invites?”

 “Yep,” says Mikasa with a nod.

 His frown deepens. “Why? Everyone just does these on Facebook nowadays.”

 Mikasa shrugs. “Well, we thought about that,” she begins, “Printing anything using the uni printers costs a fortune and they’re a lot more work, but we thought they’d be cool. You of all people know how nice it is to get something in the mail. Besides, if we did them over Facebook, you wouldn’t have anything to put in Annie’s PO box.”

 Armin blinks at her. “P-pardon?” he sputters stupidly.

 She smirks. “What?” she says. “You think I didn’t know about the PO box thing you’ve been doing since the beginning of the month? C’mon, Armin.” She snorts and shakes her head. “I think it’s sweet. Obviously she does too or she wouldn’t have gone to see that movie with you.”

 “You know about _that_ too?”

 “’Course I do, you should know by now that Eren and I basically share a mind,” she jokes. “Invite her to the Christmas party. If she’s only been here for as short as you say, she might enjoy it. Plus, it’s nice to see you so happy.”

 Armin raises an eyebrow at her. “Am I not _usually_ happy?”

 “Hm.” Mikasa rolls her eyes. “You’ll be even happier if you invite her to the Christmas party and she says yes.” She winks and hurries off before he has the chance to say anything else.

 

 

 Armin misses her when she comes to collect her mail for a few days, but he doesn’t stop leaving things in her PO box. It’s become a little bit of a ritual at this point, and it’d be a pity to end their post office Advent calendar with only a few days left ‘til Christmas. Plus, he knows it makes her smile, and that alone is enough to keep doing it. He leaves the invite in her box and he knows she receives it because one, it’s gone that afternoon, and two, she calls him about it that night.

  _“Is this invite for me?”_ she asks.

“Yep,” he replies. He rests his feet against the coffee table and examines his own invitation. “Not just from me. I was given two. The second was specifically for you.”

 “ _That was nice of…_ ” she pauses. Armin gets the feeling she’s reading over the invite. “ _Eren and Mikasa. Your friends?”_

“Mmhm. Are you going to come?”

 Annie pauses. _“I dunno_ ,” she says after a moment. “ _I appreciate all the effort but I don’t really know them, you know?”_

 “You know me,” Armin offers. “And they’d like to get to know you.”

 “ _I don’t really know if going out to see one movie and chatting through my PO box really counts as knowing you,”_ Annie teases with a chuckle. “ _I dunno, Armin…”_

“I’d like you to go,” says Armin firmly. “Even if they hadn’t gone ahead with an extra invitation, I’d still like you it if you came. N-not – you know – as my date or anything, I – I mean, it’d be great if you wanted to come with me as my date but it’s super not necessary if you’d rather we just go as friends – um – ” He stammers for a moment, feeling his face grow warmer and warmer the longer he continues to ramble. “S-sorry.” He coughs. “I’d like you to go.”

 Annie hums, and Armin waits for what feels like forever before he hears her let out a sigh. “ _Sure,_ ” she says at last. She sounds almost amused. “ _I’ll go. With you, even.”_

“I – uh – really?” His voice goes up a couple of octaves and he clears his throat rather aggressively in an effort to pretend he’s smoother than he is.

 “ _Yeah,_ ” says Annie. “ _Is – um – is that cool?”_

 “Of course!” Armin is nodding even though he knows she can’t see. “Yeah, that’d be awesome. I can pick you up?”

 He can hear the smile in her voice as she answers. “ _I’d like that.”_

 

 

  The rest of the week passes like it’s nothing and before Armin even knows it, it’s Christmas Eve. He knows that an Advent Calendar is supposed to go right through until Christmas Day but it’s not like the post office is open tomorrow and he doesn’t exactly expect her to turn up just to check a PO box that won’t have anything in it. Plus, as he sorts her mail for the day, he looks at the gift he’d wrapped for her last night and decides he wants to give it to her himself.

 He doesn’t leave anything in it that morning, and when she opens it later, she takes her usual wad of letters and then frowns. “Armin?”

 He hurries over and peers through the box at her. “Hey,” he greets. “I know. Sorry. I – uh – ” He coughs. “I have something for you but I wanted to give it to you at the party tonight.”

 The frown deepens. “You didn’t have to do that.”

 “I know,” says Armin with a shrug. “I wanted to.”

 Annie snorts. “So I guess I can give you this later too?” She holds up rectangular box with a bow on the lid.

 Armin lets out a laugh. “Annie… you know you can’t be like ‘you didn’t have to do that’ when you’ve gone and done exactly the same thing.”

 “I know,” she teases. She’s smirking at him through the box and Armin can honestly say he’s an idiot for thinking this wouldn’t happen. “But I wanted to. I’ll see you tonight then?”

 “Yeah,” he replies with a nod and an amused grin. “See you tonight.”

  

 

 They get to Eren and Mikasa’s at around six that night. Armin feels ridiculous because Mikasa had said to “wear something festive” and the only festive thing he owns is a horrid red sweater with a giant green reindeer stitched into the front. He’s almost embarrassed to be standing next to Annie because she looks as pretty as ever in her forest green coat and matching cheer bow. They’d joked around about it in the car but the true impact of how stupid he looks only hits when he raises a fist to knock.

 He barely even touches the wood when the door swings open and Eren greets them with a loud and much-too-happy “Heeeeeeeeey!”

 Armin feels Annie back up just a little and he makes a face. “Hey Eren,” he says. “Did you spike the eggnog already?”

 He scoffs. “ _No_. Mikasa said I wasn’t _allowed_ this year. Nice jumper by the way.” He sniggers and peers over Armin’s shoulder. “You must be Annie!”

 “That would be correct,” deadpans Annie, and Armin honestly can’t tell if she’s amused or not amused. “Eren, yeah?”

 Eren nods enthusiastically and ushers them both inside. “Did Armin tell you I was the coolest of his friends?”

 “He told me you were the loudest,” sasses Annie with a snort, and Eren lets out a chuckle and pats her shoulder.

 “I like your honesty!” he says. “You guys are a little early so make yourselves comfortable. Mikasa just left to pick up last minutes stuff. Help yourself to the snacks and stuff but watch out for the wings Mika made – Armin has experience already, but – uh – Mikasa thinks it’s not worth it unless you need to down a gallon of milk to recover.” He grimaces. “By the way, Annie, Armin said something about needing to find a kickboxing club?”

 Annie nods, and, pleased, Armin lets them get acquainted and helps himself to the eggnog.

 People start showing up in singles and pairs over the next hour or so. First Mikasa (with six bottles of soda and the biggest packet of nachos Armin has ever seen in his life), and then Connie and Sasha, and then Reiner and Bertl (who, in a huge plot twist of sorts, actually went to Annie’s high school here before she moved to Munich), and it’s not long before Eren and Mikasa’s apartment is full of people and he loses Annie in the crowd. Honestly, he’d hoped for a little time with her tonight, but he has all night and he’s glad she seems to be getting on with everyone. There were moments on the way over where he thinks she’d looked almost nervous, and he can’t blame her. She barely knows anyone here – it’d be hard not to be.

 In the end, he decides she’s probably okay on her own for a while and that he could use a little space, so he lets himself out onto Eren and Mikasa’s tiny balcony with Annie’s present tucked under his arm. It’s freezing, of course – he can see the fog of his breath furling and unfurling in front of him, but it’s not so bad. It’s so crowded in the little apartment that the cold is actually refreshing. He gets all of two minutes to himself before the door behind him slides open.

 “There you are.”

 He glances up. Annie is watching him carefully from the doorway.

 “Hey,” he says, grinning at her. “Enjoying yourself?”

 She nods. “Would be enjoying myself more if you hadn’t disappeared,” she answers with a snort. She moves to stand beside him and presses his gift into his hands. “It’s nearly midnight. I thought you might want your present.”

 “I really wish you hadn’t,” he says, but he accepts it nonetheless and trades it for hers. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

 “You’re one to talk,” says Annie, rolling her eyes. “It’s in a box because I can’t wrap anything to save my life.”

 Armin chuckles. “I get that,” he says, and he lifts the lid and finds a black stethoscope nestled in white crepe paper. “Annie…” he murmurs.

 “I didn’t know if you had one considering you said you were only in pre-med but… I figure you’ll need one eventually,” she mumbles. Even in the dark, Armin can see that flush spreading across her cheeks. “It’s sort of the least I can do after you went to all the trouble to make me feel welcome here.”

 “Thank you,” he says breathlessly. “I love it. God, this kind of makes mine look really lame.”

 “Says the person who’s been leaving all sorts of things in my mail box since the beginning of the month,” quips Annie. She tears the paper carefully of hers and Armin watches as her eyes go wide and her breath leaves her lips in a rush.

 He’d spent a long while thinking about this – longer than he wants to admit, to be completely honest – but their conversation after that movie had stuck with him. At the time, she’d seemed so embarrassed to tell him how much she enjoys fairy tales, and, he can’t, for the life of him, understand why that would be embarrassing in the least. He’d found this collection at a bookstore near his grandfather’s when he’d gone to visit last week. It’s a copy of the some of the best known and least known fairy tales, and has everything in it from Sleeping Beauty to one about giants and walls that he’d never even heard of until he’d bothered to Google it after they went to see that movie. It’s bound together in royal blue material and embossed with gold, and Annie stares at it in awe as shetraces her fingers against the letters.

“Thank you,” she mumbles. “This… isn’t exactly fair, you know. You’ve been doing nice things all month and now there’s this…”

 “I’m glad you like it,” says Armin, and he is. He watches her study the cover with a flush staining her cheeks and a tiny smile that makes his heart swell and beat like it already belongs to her and he sucks in a breath. “You know, I was wondering – ”

  _Beep-beep._

The moment is ruined, and Armin tears his eyes away from her face and frowns as he pulls his phone from his pocket. The text is from Eren, and it’s only one word:

  _Mistletoe ;)_

Armin glances above him and feels something heavy drop into his stomach. Suddenly his throat is dry and his voice is gone, and he looks down at Annie to find that she’s staring up at the little white flower above their heads too. They turn to look inside at the same time to find that the _entire_ _party_ has paused to watch them.

  _“Are you kidding me?”_ he manages at last.

 From behind the glass, Eren just grins and holds both thumbs up.

 Armin takes a breath. He’s probably as red as his stupid jumper at this point. “We – uh – we don’t have to if you – if you don’t want to.”

 “It’s fine,” says Annie quietly. She’s gone pretty red too, but she offers him a tiny smile and takes a step closer.

 Armin feels his insides clam up. “Um,” he squeaks. “Annie?”

 She hesitates. “Do you not want –?”

 “No! No, no, I do – I mean, I just –”

 The corners of Annie’s lips twitch. “You’re too nice,” she says with a lilt of amusement in her voice, and she leans up on her toes and plants a kiss against his lips.

 For a moment, Armin is lost. Her lips are cold against his, but they’re soft and he savours the way they feel against his and tastes eggnog on her tongue, and then he’s lost again but in a completely different sense. He thinks he hears a muffled ‘ _whoop!’_ but honestly, he doesn’t care. In this moment, with Annie in his arms and her mouth pressed against his, everything is right with the world, and when he pulls away at last, he leans his forehead against hers and lets out a quiet chuckle. “I think letting Eren convince me to put those things in your PO box was for the best,” he murmurs.

 She laughs. “I think so too.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I REALLY LOVE CHRISTMAS AUS, SO SUE ME.
> 
> 2) I was at the post office the other day picking up a parcel for my dad and it turns out that post office boxes have like, open backs, so you can come to pick up your mail and have a good chat with the people who work there _through_ your PO box and suddenly I had this image of Armin and Annie doing exactly that and Armin leaving little presents for her in her PO box right up until Christmas Day. It needed to be done. BUT
> 
> 3) I thought this idea was super cute at first but this was such a nightmare to write bc there came a point where I was like "does this even count as fanfiction anymore", and it took me two weeks + 3 night shifts to get this out and I'M SO GLAD IT'S DONE. I hope it came out okay??? Like, my concern for Armin and Annie being in character is so huge right now, and I don't even know if the fluff came across properly? In short, I really hope you guys liked it because it killed me a lot inside.


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